Search

This work presents the first large-scale analysis of the typologically and dialectally unusual appearance of variable pronominal subjects in non-finite clauses. A comparative variationist analysis of 703 Spanish adverbial purpose clauses (both finite and non-finite) reveals that, despite a significant difference in rates of pronoun expression across clause types (subjunctive and infinitival), the linguistic factors constraining null vs. expressed pronominal subjects are nearly identical. This result suggests a similar function for subject pronouns that operates independently of clause types (finite/non-finite). The usage-based analysis allows us to identify the locus of emergence for the unusual morphosyntactic construction [para + ( subject ) + infinitive ] as appearing in a non-canonical discourse context. This construction may be evidence in favor of a hypothesized general pattern of SVO word order solidification in Caribbean Spanish.

In this paper I examine the syntax–semantics of the Romeyka infinitive, still to be found in an endangered Greek variety uninterruptedly spoken in the historical region of Pontus, Turkey. It is shown that the infinitive is found: (a) as a complement to negated past tense modals; (b) in before-clauses; (c) in counterfactuals. My proposal is that the Romeyka infinitive is licensed as a NPI. It is argued that antiveridicalidity (in the sense of Giannakidou, 1998 et seq.) licenses the infinitive and therefore explains the unavailability of the Romeyka infinitive in other nonveridical contexts such as: (i) questions, (ii) nonveridical conditionals, (iii) present and imperfect tense negated modals. The analysis set out here (i) proposes a new type of NPI, namely an infinitive; (ii) reinforces the disengagement between morphological negation and antiveridicality; (iii) highlights parallels with Romance polarity subjunctives, which, like the infinitive, also share a T-C dependency; the latter may have rendered the Romeyka infinitive diachronically more prone to developing a neg-dependency too (Sitaridou, 2014).

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the occurrence of nonfinite verbs in the spontaneous speech of monolingual Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) distinguishes them from typically-developing children of the same age and to consider the Interface Deficit account of SLI, in contrast to other prominent accounts of the tense deficit, in light of current literature. To demonstrate that tense, a discourse-sensitive construction, is problematic for Spanish-speaking children with SLI, 42 monolingual Spanish-speaking children, 21 with SLI and 21 age-matched typically-developing children, were recorded for 20–35 min sessions of narrative speech, in Mexico City. The children's ages ranged from 58 to 76 months. Utterances were coded for compliance with obligatory context, defined as whether or not they agreed with plausibly associated subjects in the grammatical context. Our results show that children with SLI produced significantly more errors in verb finiteness, taking into account obligatory context, than did their typically-developing counterparts. We conclude that the type and frequency of finiteness errors produced by the children with SLI indicate that these children do indeed pass through an Extended Optional Infinitive (EOI) Stage. Our measure of obligatory context enables the identification of a bare stem, non-finite verb form, previously unidentified in spontaneous speech studies of Spanish-speaking children with SLI. Consequences of these findings for 3 prominent theories of SLI are discussed.

In this paper, I analyze a number of disparate behaviors of verbal particles in English verb particle constructions. I argue that there are three distinct structural configurations for verb particle constructions in English. English has two distinct forms of small clause particle constructions. In one the small clause is embedded by the root; in the other the predicate of the small clause embeds the root. English also has a complex head particle construction, where the particle is an unmodified head which occupies an argument position. The root embedding small clause particle can co-occur with the complex head particle—but no other combination of particles is permitted.

The Modal Existential construction (ModEx)—as in Russian Mne est’ cto pocitat’, ‘There is something for me to read’—has received much attention in the literature. This paper analyzes a related construction in Russian which contains in subject position, not a dative DP, but a PP headed by the preposition u, ‘at’—U menja est’ cto pocitat’, ‘I have something to read’. Because u marks possessors, I term this construction the Modal Possessive (ModPoss). Although both constructions contain an infinitival wh-clause embedded under an existential predicate, I identify several syntactic and semantic differences between ModPoss and ModEx, including: (1) the dative DP in ModEx, but not the possessor in ModPoss, is the subject of the infinitival clause, and (2) ModPoss, but not ModEx, asserts the existence of an individual in the actual world. I argue that the differences are fully explained by the presence of a Possessor Phrase (PossP) in ModPoss. PossP (1) introduces an additional argument and (2) requires that its complement be a set of individuals, forcing low existential closure of the world variable introduced by the infinitive. The present analysis also relates ModPoss to embedded questions, free relatives, and correlatives.

English-speaking children's emerging knowledge of control is investigated by focusing on the complementation of the verb want , a verb that permits both obligatory control and raising to object (RtO) complements. Children show an intriguing developmental pattern in their use of the infinitival marker to . Initially children produce complements with and without to ; our diary data show that among those complements without to are ones in which the null subject is not controlled by the matrix subject. These non-control utterances disappear as children's use of to increases over time. At the time when to reaches ceiling in control complements, it is entirely absent from raising to object complements. The developmental data are analyzed using Landau's (2000, 2004, 2006) Agree-based theory of control. On Landau's account, different kinds of clausal complements (e.g. indicative, infinitive, etc.) result from different assignments of tense and agreement on the C and I heads. The acquisition stages are argued to reflect the child's progressive grammatical hypotheses about the feature composition of possible complements for want . For both control and RtO complements, children initially assign features that result in subjunctive complements. Children's ‘non-adult’ utterances are all viewed as legitimate complement types made available by Universal Grammar.

This paper addresses the relationship between the frequency of morphological, lexical and syntactic forms in the input and children's language acquisition. The problem of obtaining reliable frequency measures under different sampling regimes is discussed. Since children are not simple associationist processors onto which the frequency of hearing or producing a string maps directly, a number of factors that interact with frequency are reviewed: form-function mappings, neighbourhood relations and multiple cues. These factors raise the problem of the level of granularity at which we test for a frequency-based explanation which can only be established through empirical research. Studies showing a relationship between the relative frequency of forms in the input and children's errors, including morphological errors, optional infinitive errors and accusative-for-nominative errors in English are discussed. The final section of the paper deals more briefly with some counter-arguments to the importance of frequency effects in the learning of grammar.

In this paper, we examine in some detail the syntactic distribution and semantic properties of French tensed clausal complements introduced by a/de ce que. We argue that the clausal determiner analysis put forth in Zaring (1992) is inadequate for explaining their distribution and that an extension of Kayne's (1999) treatment of a and de + infinitive to a/de ce que is also unlikely to yield the right results since a number of contexts reveal that the distribution of so-called prepositional complementizers in infinitives and that of a/de ce que only partially overlap. We propose instead that a/de ce que are noncompositional elements of the C system that are restricted to tensed clausal complements to verbs, nouns and adjectives that form coherent semantic classes. This type of selection and distribution is shown to be strongly reminiscent of that of indirect interrogative si. Finally we argue, based on topic placement, that given Rizzi's (1997, 2001) multi-layered approach to the C system, de ce que, just like que, occupies the head of ForceP while a ce que appears in a lower position: head of IntP.

Certain modal auxiliary and control constructions in Thai differ only in the choice between a modal or control verb. Despite a possibility to analyze them as (subject) raising vs. control predicates, the present study argues that their counterparts with the marker thii may not be derived via the raising vs. control conventions. The reasons include the presence of thii caʔ which marks infinitival complements and a possible connection between modal auxiliaries and lexical control verbs revealed by a test on Thai clausal idioms. This study proposes an additional functional category, Mood (Irrealis) Phrase, M(I)P, to account for the co-occurrence restrictions of thii and non-assertive (irrealis) infinitival complements, and develops a unified analysis for modal and control constructions with thii , parallel to Kayne's (2000) approach to control infinitives with di in Italian. The analysis developed here is consequential to the syntax and semantics of modals and control infinitives, cross-linguistically. Firstly, it suggests that modals that behave identically to control predicates be analyzed by means of the control approach, rather than the raising predicate approach, which has been held customarily. Secondly, it establishes the role of the MIP, which enables the expression of a hypothetical tense that occurs in infinitival complements introduced by markers (i.e. thii in Thai, di in Italian, and de in French).

This paper develops a new perspective on the question of what type of verb movement the modern Celtic languages display, V to I movement or V to C movement. Under the standard assumption that the subject remains relatively low in these languages compared to Germanic languages, this category fails to be a diagnostic, since both verb movement operations cross the subject. The analysis presented here starts from the theory of verb movement developed in Koeneman (2000), which argues that the verb does not move to prefabricated functional head positions but moves in order to project one or more of its functional features (tense and agreement). It is shown how this theory offers a better understanding of verb movement (parameters) than mainstream approaches. After developing a concrete proposal for verb movement variation in Germanic, the paper tries to extend this analysis to the Celtic languages, so that a uniform analysis of verb movement (variation) ensues. The main conclusion is that it is very unlikely that Celtic languages have a verb movement operation involving an agreement projection. They are better analyzed as having a verb movement operation that projects tense features. The result is that the nature of verb movement in Germanic and Celtic is basically the same.

In the linguistic literature Hungarian infinitival clauses are claimed to project a full CP with all the left peripheral projections of a finite clause present, and the very same restrictions on the order of these constituents. However, in certain infinitival structures pointed out in the present paper the order of typical left peripheral phrases fails to obey the expected restrictions. Moreover, matrix constituents can mingle with constituents of the infinitival clause which may lead one to suppose a mono-clausal structure. This paper presents data that support a bi-clausal rather than a mono-clausal approach to restructuring. Adopting Hinterholzl's (1999, 2006) bi-clausal approach to restructuring and his scope-based analysis of scrambling, an analysis will be proposed that captures the seemingly contradictory properties of the relevant infinitives.

The paper examines two questions concerning Irish non-finite clauses, i.e.: (1) the free variation between overt subjects and PRO and (2) dialectal variation. As regards the first issue, it is argued that Irish non-finite clauses represent two types, namely: clauses with PRO which exhibit anaphoric Agr in T checking PRO's null Case and non-finite clauses which exhibit non-anaphoric Agr in T checking nominative Case of the subject. The mechanism licensing overt subjects and PRO can be used to account for distinct word orders found in Northern and in Southern dialects. While the former allow overt object shift in the presence of either the overt subject or PRO, hence yielding the following orders: S+O+particle+V and PRO+O+particle+V, the latter trigger overt object shift only in the presence of PRO and never in the presence of an overt subject, hence giving rise to the following patterns: S+particle+V+O and PRO+O+particle+V. In order to account for this dialectal variation, the particle a is taken to represent a marker of transitivity in Northern dialects and hence to appear in v. Object shift is triggered by the necessity to satisfy the v's EPP-feature and subject raising from Spec, vp is triggered by the EPP-feature of T. For Southern dialects the following assumptions are made: (1) the particle a has always a Case feature to check, (2) the particle a can appear in v or in T, when it appears in v, it checks the Case of the object and when it appears in T, it checks the Case of the subject, (3) overt subjects are licensed by the particle a , which is an overt realisation of non-anaphoric Agr in T, and (4) PRO is licensed by anaphoric Agr in T. Under these assumptions, the order S+particle+V+O arises if a is in T, whereas the order PRO+O+particle+V surfaces if a occurs in v. It is further suggested that subject and object raise in Southern dialects for Case reasons, not for EPP-checking. The pattern S+O + particle + V is impossible in Southern dialects, as in order to license the overt subject a must be in Agr, whereas in order to license object shift a must appear in v. Since a cannot occupy two positions simultaneously, this order is never attested.

This paper examines the status of syntactic rules, such as they are given in formal frameworks, by discussing the case assignment to the Russian semipredicatives sam (‘self’) and odin (‘alone’) when they occur with the infinitive. The paper focuses in particular on the appearance of these semipredicates in the dative case, the so-called ‘second dative’. It is argued that formal approaches to the second dative suffer from a number of shortcomings which can all be contributed to the fact that they do not take the semantics of the relevant expressions (dative, nominative, infinitive, lexical meaning of sam and odin) into consideration in the linguistic analysis. The negligence of semantics leads to (i) the use of non-motivated rules and notions, (ii) circularity in the explanation, (iii) arbitrariness in the distinction of linguistic data, and, in some cases (iv) wrong predictions. In this paper it is shown that an analysis that proceeds from the semantic (or conceptual) basis of morphological case adds a deeper level of explanation and understanding to formal analyses of the second dative. By discussing the different contexts in which the second dative occurs, it is shown that the syntactic combination of the second dative and the infinitive expresses that there is a force directed at the realization of the infinitive situation by the participant expressed by odin or sam. The nominative occurs if the idea of assigning a situation is absent, and the subject of the infinitive (which is associated with the participant expressed by the semipredicative) and the infinitive situation, are conceptualized as manifestations of the same scene.

This article presents an approach to the English to-infinitive where to is a preposition with a bare infinitive complement and ECM and object control complements receive a small clause analysis. Crucial to this approach is the positioning of PRO, which always occurs in the subject position of to's complement. This positioning allows a complementary distribution of PRO, lexical NPs, and NP-trace. The distribution of these elements, in conjunction with the small clause approach, creates multiple advantages including the elimination of current inconsistencies in the theory of null case, the reduction of control to anaphoric binding, and a general and uniform theory of complementation.

This paper argues that the traditional view of experience-dependent properties (learned properties) of language as developing late and non-experience-dependent properties as developing early is in fact often wrong. Parameters are set correctly very early (Very Early Parameter-Setting) and properties of inflectional items are also learned very early. On the other hand, some universal properties of language emerge later, presumably under a genetically-driven maturational program. The Optional Infinitive(OI) Stage (Wexler, 1990, 1992, 1994) of grammatical development is explained by the AGR/TNS Omission Model (ATOM) of Schutze and Wexler, (1996). This paper derives this model via a new proposal for a developmental constraint: the Unique Checking Constraint (UCC), which prevents a D-feature on DP from checking more than one D-feature on functional categories, thus forcing either AGR or TNS to be omitted. The Minimalist framework of Chomsky 1995 is assumed — in particular the assumption that a D-feature and not a case feature is the driving force for the Extended Projection Principle. With AGR and TNS both having a D-feature, UCC predicts that finite sentences will not converge. The model also predicts that subjects of OI's will raise to a higher functional projection, even when case is not assigned by INFL, thus solving a traditional problem in the theory of OI's. With natural assumptions on the nature of null-subject languages, the Null-Subjection/Optional Infinitive Correlation of Wexler (1996) is derived from the UCC — that OI's exist in early child language if and only if the adult grammar is not an INFL-licensed null-subject language. Thus the UCC is seen as a fundamental explanatory force for a range of phenomena in early child grammar. Moreover the child data provide strong evidence for the claim that a D-feature motivates the raising of the subject in UG, thus unifying child and adult grammar and demonstrating the usefulness of the investigation of child grammar in the study of UG.

Attempts to describe ‘what auxiliaries are and why they behave the way they do’ on the basis of syntactic criteria have not been successful. This study, which approaches the problem from the point of view of meaning, postulating that any word is used for the meaning it expresses, focuses on the nature of DO, the auxiliary usually considered a ‘dummy’ word. It proposes for DO a residual lexical meaning, the representation of a stretch of duration, as well as the grammatical meaning of any verb in the indicative. On the basis of this meaning combined with that of the infinitive, an explanation of usage in interrogative, negative and positive sentences is proposed. This analysis provides a starting point for exploring the system of auxiliaries in English and the nature of compound verbs.

This paper proposes an explanation, in exclusively semantic terms, of the distribution of the infinitive form of the verb when used with wh- words in contemporary English in both independent and subordinate clauses. The explanation proposed is based on the meaning of the infinitive, the meaning of to and the pragmatic implications of the meanings of the whwords as regards the existence of what they refer to. The method followed shows that linguistic semantics can contribute in a significant way to the explanation of what would appear to be mere distributional or syntactic facts.

This article updates Paradis and El Fenne (1991, 1992). The C/0 alternation (including the Ṽ/VN one) in French verbal inflection (e.g. dort [dor]/dorment [dorm] ‘to sleep’ 3sg. and 3pl. Present Indicative), which occurs in 588 regular (non-suppletive and non-defective) verbs, is explained and related naturally to the C/0 alternation found in many other morphological and syntactic environments. More specifically, we maintain that the notion of ‘floating consonant’ (i.e. a consonant without a timing slot) along with two principles, the No Empty Onset Principle and the Licensing Principle, used in the framework of the Theory of Constraints and Repair Strategies (cf. Paradis, 1988a,b), suffices to handle the C/0 alternation in verbal inflection and elsewhere. Not only does the system we propose result in a considerable simplification of French verbal inflection (it gets rid of numerous thematic segments and ad hoc - when not contradictory - context rules), it makes important new predictions concerning the selection of Infinitive suffixes in relation to the nature of a stem-final consonant (floating/non-floating). We show that these predictions are confirmed by the results of production tests, administered by El Fenne (1994), which clearly indicate that the floating consonant system we propose reflects the competence of French speakers.

A detailed analysis of the to-infinitives in Old English shows that the ‘structural parallelism hypothesis’ (Chomsky 1981, Koster and May 1982, Wilder 1988) that the infinitival clauses have a complete IP/CP structure isomorphic to finite sentences is not universally valid. Specifically, it is argued that OE to-infinitives have a simple AGRP structure in the sense of Pollock (1989), and that the infinitival marker to, identified as AGR, represents the external argument of an infinitive verb. This lexical property of to's external γ-role absorption accounts for a number of seemingly peculiar syntactic phenomena in Old English, among them the absence of morphologically passive to-infinitives, the unavailability of subject-relation infinitival relatives, the lack of both a lexical and a PRO subject in to-infinitives, and the frequent occurrence of ‘retroactive infinitives’. It is also argued that the Spec of AGRP, which is dethermatized by to, has a dual function of A- and A-bar positions, thus questioning the validity of the absolute A/A-bar distinction.

Epistemic deontic Be (as in Keats was to die young and in This door is to remain closed all day ) only occurs in finite positions, even though the verb Be is not morphologically defective and has an infinitive, an -Ing form and a participle. This brings out the insufficiency of McCawley's (1971) argument that English modals occur only as finites because of their defective morphology. It is demonstrated that epistemic deontic Be cannot be accommdated in the rule system by means of which Akmajlan, Steele and Wasow (1979) stipulate the positions of English auxiliary verbs. Hence this system must be modified. It is argued in the light of the theory on tense in Rigter that, contrary to Akmajian et al's proposal, modals are auxiliary verbs and belong to the same position class as epistemic deontic Be . The syntactic stipulation in Akmajian (1977) and in Akmajian et al (1979) that complements of perception verbs contain neither a perfect nor a modal is shown to be semantically motivated. Evidence is adduced that the progressive does occur in structures underlying perception verb complements. It is suggested that the distribution of semantic material over stacked structures is subject to a semantico-syntactic ordering principle which places the more objective predications in the scope of the more subjective predications.

This paper argues, within the Government-Binding framework, that the German infinitive marker zu is a complementizer morpheme, not an INFL morpheme, as is standardly assumed; and that subject-Raising is possible in the presence of a complementizer, again contrary to the standard view. Treating zu as a complementizer allows for a simple and unified account, not previously available, for the absence of interrogative infinitives, of accusative subjects, and of verb-second effects in infinitives containing zu. The existence of subject-Raising in constructions with zu-infinitives creates a problem insofar as subject-Raising entails S'-deletion — i.e. the absence of a complementizer — according to the standard version of the theory. Since, however, by contrast with other languages, there is no independent evidence for S'-deletion in the relevant constructions of German, it is argued here that the relevant part of the theory — the Empty Category Principle — should be revised so as to permit Raising without S'-deletion in just the German case. The second part of the paper makes a specific proposal to this effect within the terms of Chomsky's (1986) ‘Barriers’ framework.

In the present article the distribution of lexically governed participles and infinitive clauses in Modern German is described within a topological framework according to which sentences and clauses are subdivided into ‘fields’. Following Bech (1955, 1957), a basic distinction is made between a ‘coherent’ and an ‘incoherent construction’. In the ‘coherent construction’, the infinite verb form stands in final position and its dependent elements are integrated within the superordinate matrix sentence or clause. In the ‘incoherent construction’, the infinite verb and its dependent elements basically form a continuous sequence, as is the case in four different ‘simple positions’ (extraposition, medial position, relative position, initial position). However, these may to a certain extent be broken up. Hence five different discontinuous incoherent constructions may also secondarily arise. The latter cases are generally rather unusual and more often than not subject to heavy restrictions.

Reasons are given for accepting the proposal that the Latin accusative and infinitive developed from a reanalysis of the arguments of verbs of ordering . It is claimed that reanalysis took place as a result of the existence of the alternative ut clause complement that verbs of ordering could govern. Distinctions between Latin infinitival complement types are drawn, and it is concluded that, whereas the Equi complement types should be analysed as VPs, the accusative and infinitive complements must be derived from underlying sentences. It is further shown that accusative and infinitive complements are themselves subclassifiable on the basis of the illocutionary force of their underlying sentence. Suggestions are made for the synchronic analysis of Latin infinitival complementation, taking these various factors into account, and implications for the study of diachronic syntax are discussed.

The present paper deals with prepositional infinitive constructions with imperative force, such as A callar! (‘Shut up!’), A trabajar! (‘Go to work!’) and Pues a hacerlo tu, entonces (‘So you do it!’). It is argued that prepositional infinitives belong to the class of impositive speech acts, which are a subclass of directive speech acts. By means of a systematic comparison between the imperative and the prepositional infinitive it is demonstrated that the latter has a more emphatic force than the former. The semantic analysis of the construction shows that the speaker using it wants the corresponding command to be carried out immediately. As for the syntactic structure of the prepositional infinitive, its transformational relationship with the ir a + infinitive periphrasis is discussed, as well as the possibilities of deriving both from a single performative deep structure. Lastly, the surface realizations of the subject are examined.

Up to now, much work on the serial verb construction has been devoted either to the historical derivation of the construction or to its synchronic grammatical status. By focusing on a hitherto neglected aspect of the serial verb construction, that of the commutability constraints on verbs operating in concomitant serialization, this paper uses examples from Yoruba to highlight both the relatedness of verb serialization to other types of syntactic typology and the shortcomings of current research on the derivation of the serial verb construction. We set up a positional semantic classification of verbs which facilitates the prediction of permissible, doubtful, and non-permissible serial verb strings, showing (i) the commutability restrictions arising from such a functional-semantic classification and (ii) how various reductionist derivational explanations of the serial verb phenomenon can arise from undue concentration on one or the other of the various verb semantic functions. The utility of the approach dopted here is further illustrated by its capacity to handle an indefinitely long string of verbs, thus releasing verb serialization research from overconcentration on only two verbs in series.

This paper defends the position that there is no finite/non-finite distinction, hence no infinitive, in the basilects of Atlantic pidgins and creoles (PC). It argues that in languages where it is attested the infinitive is a morphologically-based distinction, and that, cross-linguistically, there is no constant syntactic or semantic characteristic that can be associated with it. Syntactic criteria commonly invoked to justify the infinitive are reviewed and shown to argue generally against assuming the distinction in Atlantic PC's. Parallel diachronic evidence is adduced from the development and partial loss of the infinitive in, respectively, Yoruba and Kituba to support the conclusion.